


A Letter to Franklin

by Emmzzi



Category: We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Genre: Gen, contains a lot of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmzzi/pseuds/Emmzzi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: after Thursday, Kevin gives his perspective on the Plaskett-Khatchadourian relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Letter to Franklin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trollprincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trollprincess/gifts).



Hi, Dad. Kevin here. They finally let me send you a tape from Claverack. I've been real good, getting the privileges for this. But it's real important I get this off my chest.

 

Hey, nurse, if you’re listening, can you leave my dad alone for 10 minutes? This is family stuff, I’m sure he wouldn’t want you listening in. I… I have a lot to explain, and apologise for, and it’s kinda private. I’m sure you understand. Thanks.

 

 

 

We alone now?

 

Are we alone now, Franklin? Mr Plastic. Pops.

 

“ _The perpetrator’s father_.”

 

How does it feel, being so famous, so undeservingly famous? Notorious, I should say. Hey, look! Long words. Bet you didn’t think I had it in me.

 

I’ve been reading the newspaper. They don’t go all out, of course – there’s a limit to what they’ll say about a paralysed man, it’s not like you aren’t suffering, oh you’re suffering, you poor, poor man.

 

Still, you have to ask, “ _What kind of a father was he really_?” At least the Times does. Over six pages in the last magazine, along with pictures of your middle age flab crammed into shorts. Your bald patch? Looking great, pops. Somehow, the general public has come to think there is something LACKING in you. Something “ _not quite right_.”

 

I know what it was, of course. Exactly what was “not right.”

 

Do you get letters? Proposals? Is fame-by-association bringing you legion desperate, fat, broken, nurturing women, eager to change your piss-bag, mop your brow, spoon feed into your limp and useless drooling mouth? Eager to fix the thing that is wrong with you?

 

I bet you’ve never had so many offers of pussy, and so little chance to use it. Jesus, do you remember telling me to stop jerking off in front of mom? I can’t believe you did that.

 

No, I can. Another thing you did for the look of it. Another wink, another misplaced attempt at manly camaraderie. “Everyone does it, Kevin, it’s only natural, but your mom gets a little shy.” Yeah, everyone whacks off into butter wrappers with the door open. You thought that was about the orgasm, about squeezing out the spunk? Really?

 

You don’t do it now, Franklin, do you. Not with your shrivelled dick, finally matching the state of your tiny, dysfunctional brain.

 

I could have my cock sucked by a different psychotic bitch every day of the week and not run out of vapid lips until the rapture. Hardly seems fair that you’ll get offers too - after all, this is your fault, isn’t it? – but then, as I think I already pointed out with my eloquent actions, the whole world’s fucked.

 

So. How does it feel, pops?

 

She broke my arm, you know. I didn’t fall off of the changing table. She threw me across the room, knocked seven shades of shit out of me. You trusting dumb fuck.

 

Me, I was just a kid – hardly even gotten a personality. I can understand, but not forgive, you missing the lie. Her, though? Wasn’t she meant to be your “soul mate”, your “life partner”? Weren’t you meant to KNOW her?

 

You weren’t looking, were you? You and Celia both, trusting, naïve. I kept hoping; as the lies grew more and more outrageous, I wondered when you’d finally see it, get it. But then, after a certain point, it’s too much to own up to. If you saw through Pagorski, then you’d have to think again about Lenny, Celia… and of course, Eva. Such a huge amount to be wrong about, all at once.

 

You can’t even say sorry now, can you, you slack-jawed limp-fingered bag of stinking flesh. You can’t even kill yourself.

 

She’d try to be a “real” mother, and at every turn, you undermined her, you useless, blind fuck. “It was Lenny.” “That bitch Pagorski.” “It’s only a squirt gun.” Your idea of discipline was holding out on the cheese doodles for half an hour.

 

All I had to do was learn to not want. Just not wanting, it’s so easy. You couldn’t do a damn thing to me, Franklin. Most of my life I wasn’t even sure you were my father. How could you be?

 

If there was one thing I wanted, really wanted, my whole childhood, I longed for Eva’s long lost lover to turn up and claim me as his own. He could have been an IT billionaire or a serial killer or a road sweeper; as long as he had brains and balls, he’d be an improvement. But you, Franklin? What kind of a role model were you? Weak, ineffectual, unperceptive. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but I know I have to, and using very small words.

 

What else should I have expected from a man who made his living driving around looking for _interesting trees._ A _nice cliff._ At least your wife, your pitiful, generally pathetic wife, could string a sentence together. You lived on her money at the same time you derided her career. And you call me fucked up. Or I assume you call me fucked up. It seems a reasonable guess.

 

I never understood why she stayed with you. Certainly not the near silent, all too hurried once-a-week lights out sex. Oh, yeah, I could hear that from the corridor. Ever wonder why I never brought a girl home? The prospect of eternal limp marital sex would put anyone off.

 

The grunting exertions stopped in the end, anyway, didn’t they. Tailed off after Celia was born – and how Eva could bear to have your rancid seed growing in her for so long... I was so disappointed. And sex stopped completely later. I’d say about the time you accused her of blinding Celia. Is that right, Franklin? Is that when you finally pushed her too far?

 

If I made a mistake – and I’ll confess I may have, nobody’s perfect – it was Celia. I overestimated you, pops. You were meant to take your damaged blonde darling away; get out of the house and out of our lives. You were always meant to blame Eva but I never realised just HOW weak you were. In my plan, I could stop faking interest in your tedious job, insipid ball games, your hollow waste of a life and the energy you sucked out of mom.  She might have become someone, if you’d left it to me.

 

Yeah, I think sometimes she wants to fuck me. More than she wanted to fuck you, anyway. Big deal.

 

But no, you had to stay. Maybe you thought I needed someone to defend me. Heh.

 

You still provided entertainment, of course. Waiting to see how you’d try and talk her round; how long the stony silence between you would last; who would crack first; how she’d make me aware she knew the truth, while feeding you the slop and sentiment you wanted, needed, craved.

 

You were arrogant, too. You thought we were so alike. “I was the same at your age, just as angry with the man, same frustrations, but damn you’ve got some stones, son.” Yeah. You never had the stones for any damn thing. Took you to even drive after one glass of wine. Never played away from home even when you weren’t getting any. Never managed to stop Eva travelling wherever she wanted. She even fooled you into that second kid. What, you thought you’d gotten irresistible somehow? I knew her game, and what was I, seven?

 

Does she visit you? If she does, she doesn’t say. I hope not. And then, sometimes I do. I hope she can see you for the miserable rotting pile you are, now that your body matches your twisted mind. I hope she looks you in the eye and feels nothing. You’re not worth her pity, you’re certainly not worth her anger.

 

She’s never missed a visit with me, though. She’s toughening up; this whole thing, it’s toughening her up. I’ll be moving upstate soon, too. Longer journey for her. No more kiddy crims. That’ll knock off the last edges. By the time I get out, she’ll be ready. Mommer still loves her Kevvy Wevvy; but I’ll toughen her up real good. Really make something of her.

 

I bet she stays away from you. Who’d want to see her husband sitting brainless in his own shit, diapered up, pissing uncontrollably, stinking? Other than _Times_ readers, obviously. Yeah, quite the photo spread.

 

Except you’re not brainless, are you Franklin? You know exactly what’s going on around you; but you can’t do a damn thing about it. Can’t move, can’t talk. The doc said I did a great job; and you let me, didn’t you?

 

You could share the tapes, of course. Publish them to the world. I’ll leave that to you. Can you blink sense, meaning, to the nurse? Do you know morse code now?

 

Yeah, you could show Eva . Show her what an evil, vile son she produced. You think she doesn’t already know? Eighteen years she’s known, and still, she keeps on coming. “Mother love,” I think they call it. Or duty. It eats her up that she never stood up to you.

 

Dumb fuck. I was always going to kill Celia, whether or not you stayed still. All the people I ever met, Eva was the only one sharp enough to catch on to me. And she was never going to be free while she had that little brat hanging onto her skirt tails.

 

The look on your face – the realisation – it was classic. I play it over and over again in my mind. It’s one of my special memories; warms my heart in the cold night.

 

Wifey was right all along. I WAS an evil child. I DID do everything she said I did. I WAS firing right into your spine. You or the kid? Heh. You AND the kid.

 

I doubt you could have done anything, Franklin. I learned not to care very young. There was nothing you could take away; no physical punishment. But then, we’ll never know, will we? We’ll never know because (hah!) you were spineless then, much as you are now.

 

So. It’s my turn. You tortured Eva all these years; now it’s my turn, with you.

 

I’ll be coming to finish the job, Franklin, just as soon as I am able. Which should be five years or so, although as you will remember from school, I am very good at doing just enough to pass. So maybe “good behaviour,” yes? But you won’t know. I might come right away; I might break out early; I might leave it for years. You won’t know when to expect me; when precious release will come for you.

 

Plenty of time to think about how you screwed up. How you left Eva to cope alone, day after night after day. How pretty insipid little Celia died because you couldn’t discipline your own son.

 

Plenty of time to sit in your own shit and stew, pops. And to listen to this over, and over.

 

You enjoy it. I know I will.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> for Yuletide 2010: requestor's prompt
> 
> It would obviously have to be AU, but I'd really like a story in which Franklin is forced to confront what Kevin has done and what he is the same way Eva did.
> 
> Me too! So here is one take on it.


End file.
